Ranma helped her to her feet and allowed her to lean on him as her legs wobbled. He held a steadying arm around her until she seemed a little more steady and then helped her over to one of the nearby coffee shops.
Neither of the pair noticed as an old man picked up her fallen cane and wandered off into an alley.
Lowering her down into one of the more secluded booths of what appeared to be one of the cheaper coffee shops, he asked her what she wanted to drink.
"Tea, thank you," she lilted in a foreign accent. Ranma blinked for a second, the way she spoke reminded him a little of that weird Amazon girl, Shampoo, but there also seemed to be something else about the sound of her voice that was familiar.
Shrugging it off as some weird deja vu feeling, he lowered his pack to the floor and walked over to the shop counter. Looking at the ridiculous prices charged for the foreign coffee and tea, Ranma quickly settled for some traditional, but still expensive, sencha [a popular variety of green tea].
He could certainly see why his tight-fisted oyaji had never brought him to a place like Shinjuku before.
As the waitress behind the counter placed the two cups down in front of him the inevitable happened, and he sighed as a jug of cold water was knocked over, triggering his curse.
"S... So... Sorry," stuttered the startled waitress as she stared at the short red head who now stood before her.
The red head picked up the two cups and tried to look cheerful, "Don't worry about it, it happens all the time these days," she said resignedly.
Setting the two cups down on the table in the booth that she had just left, she looked up to see the other girl studying her clothes with a questioning frown on her face. She is probably wondering why I'm wearing the same clothes as the boy she just met, Ranma thought to herself.
"Don't worry, I'm the same guy who helped you into here," she said, but seeing the bewildered stare she tried to clarify herself, "Don't get me wrong, I'm not a transvestite or anything like that."
She sat herself across from the other girl, "You see, for as long as I can remember, I have been wandering from place to place with my oyaji. He wants me to be the greatest martial artist who ever lived, or something, and keeps coming up with these ridiculous schemes to improve my skills, but they usually seem to backfire in a way that leaves me getting the blame for something."
She sighed as she looked back into her memories, "Some would say it was a hard life, not knowing where the next meal was coming from or where we would be sleeping that night, but back then I at least knew what I was. Since I was knocked into a cursed spring by my stupid oyaji I haven't been able to say whether I'm one thing or another. One moment I'm just a 16 year old boy, the next I'm this!" she declared in disgust with a sweep of her hands.
The other girl nodded her head, "That's very profound," she said earnestly.
Ranma sweat-dropped, "Er... right," she muttered. She blinked her eyes as a thought occurred to her, "Hey, I just realised we haven't been introduced, what's your name?"
The other girl smiled happily, "Pai," she declared.
"Pai, huh?" mused Ranma, "Well..."
See other episodes by Murasaki no Tsuki
(Posted Mon, 22 Dec 2003 01:36)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.